Tales and Tails and NMCs - the Excellent Cats March On

[TheShellBeach]

Join us as 2024 starts and our cats continue to run our lives for us.

@Supersimkin2 Lush is a very good description for Benny. His fur is amazing, so thick and soft. He still has his kitten face too.

I luffs Benny 😻

Does anyone want a Toad? I'll even swap him for TC. The cats have a toy box (inspired by Shady's toy box on FB). Toad was shouting for food this evening and I was ignoring him as he has had three meals plus there's dry food available. He then squatted on the toy box and peed all over the toys. Fred is not happy!!

Tobias would like to have a chapter in Linney's guide regarding scratching places.

This would include such tips as scratching the walls right next to the carefully placed scratching posts,boards, mats etc. Has the added advantage that the slave will likely move the offered scratching item to the place you were re-decorating, thereby opening up access to a fresh bit of wall.

The best position to lie in when scratching the carpet on the vertical section of a stair - note extra marks for cuteness of position and expression so slave melts rather than getting mad.

The noisiest surfaces to scratch when the slave is sleeping close by, so they can wake up to appreciate your artistic efforts. Bonus points for having the zoomies at the same time & charging from one scratch position to another, sounding like a herd of hippos.

Hours of fun can be had scratching the bottom of the litter tray. At least 3 minutes should be spent digging the hole you intend to "use" - bonus for leaving a bare patch at the bottom of the tray & weeing noisily onto the bare plastic. After using the tray, you can dig and scrape for at least 5 minutes before the slave gives a dirty look with a comment such as "really, do you HAVE to?". Further bonus points if the tray has noisy litter like wood pellets, when fresh you can drown out the TV on a good day!

Valentine’s Day started here with little black Havelock painstakingly climbing through my window with a box of Milk
Tray in his teeth.

Just kidding.

He broke into the kitchen, fell into the sink and licked the washing up before screaming for second breakfast.

My late, much missed little Bubbles even managed to make bringing up a hairball cute. She'd do a little wheeze, then a ladylike hiccup ("ahem"), and tidily drop a teeny neat pellet. Oscar, on the other hand, never did anything by halves. He hawked loudly up to the point where I got to him and tried to put him outside, then out it came, with much gross accompaniment. Pest.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Linney wants to add:

Make sure you get as much litter as possible out of the tray and on to the floor while you're digging for victory

and

Despite sounding like you're digging to the centre of the earth, be certain to leave your "deposit" in full view of your hapless owner when next they wander past the litter tray.

😂😂 Havelock, you old romantic!

Litter tips from Leroy:

Dig to the antipodes
Poo on mound
Scratch at walls in a show of covering said poo
Leave poo exposed and as much litter in the floor as possible

🙄

This is one of my sister's NMCs in Mexico (she has no cats and doesn't really like them. Clearly she is stupid). There's something strangely unnerving about his face, like he's a human trapped inside the body of a cat.

Rum, that cat has a very interesting face!
And they look huge too! How could your DSis not love that beautiful face 🐾 ❤️

She did stroke a different cat who was walking alongside her shouting for attention. Apparently most of the cats she's met out there won't let strangers come near them

This is another one that was missing but thankfully found. They have strange looking cats in Mexico!

They've only been here a week so it's too early to get complacent, but so far my girls have made a lot less mess with their litter than I do trying to scoop and refill it. Izzy even rakes it flat after use! See, I told you they weren't real cats.

Those Mexican cats sure look spooky. No wonder your sister is wary of them.

Yup, your cats are broken/fake cats. Next you'll be saying they sleep in their cat beds.

Well... they do, sort of. I got them one doughnut bed and one igloo, with the expectation that Izzy would hide in the igloo while the (presumed) bolder Thrifty would take the open bed. Nah, they both like the doughnut bed and take slightly edgy turns with it. When one is in the bed the other is normally on the recliner, or in Thrifty's case, under it (she's on it now though; Izzy is looking miffed). At night Izzy sleeps on the base of the cat tree. Nobody's been up it yet. Nor have they ventured into the igloo; they seem to view it as a rather unwieldy toy, as witness the loop handle which was obviously designed for biting.

I was thinking today of getting a second doughnut bed, but we all know how that ends.

Another piece of evidence for the robo-cat theory. Izzy is particularly keen on the little crackly mice Allergic gave them. She pats them all round the floor and occasionally loses them behind furniture etc, so far so normal. I put a few more out so now there are half a dozen in circulation.

She's found the lost ones and collected them all in the corner by the cat tree, along with the hand-sewn catnip toys. Not exactly lined up straight, but pretty neat just the same. Do they do this? 😕

One thing I do know they do is bring you samples of their prey, which is a bit nasty when it's a dead mangled thing (one cat I had many years ago, Whisky aka the Beest (sic), brought us a whole dead rabbit, so XH threw it out, then the cat came back in again with just the head and proceeded to juggle with it!!!). In this case they only have toys, so I am very chuffed that she has brought two of the mice over in her mouth and placed them next to me. Maybe she's not a robot but a live retriever? Still not a cat.

🤣🤣🤣🤣 the rabbit head juggling 😮😮😮 how did you react??!!

I shouted "Get that out of here!" and he shot out of the door, leaving the head looking at me from the mat. I instructed XH to get the remains disposed of properly this time instead of just throwing it over the fence. I miss that cat. XH, not so much.

I miss that cat. XH, not so much

🤣🤣🤣

Hello! Velvet and I are back and we have news!

First ever visit to the vet - complete! She was very good about getting into the carrier and then possibly broke the decibel record for angsty cat arias about how much they HATE cars, they REALLY don't like them, PLEASE don't drive me around again, and so on. Close to the vet's she actually grabbed my arm around the coat sleeve through the door and sort of pulled it towards her. Not sure what she was trying to do but she was otherwise very good. Then she absolutely charmed the vet and everyone else and contented herself with some halfhearted regular mews on the way back. I was really worried that she would think we were taking her back to her old owners or to Battersea, or be scared of us or the carrier because she doesn't like being trapped in any way. But she seems fine :)

More generally, she's spending quite a lot of time with me, which is lovely but a bit worrying as I don't know what I'm going to do when I have to leave her. We're so attached to each other now :( despite my mother trying to influence her to like her more, which is now becoming a bit silly so I won't bore you with it.

Anyway, Velvet wants to submit her draft for consideration. Bit of a niche chapter, but I hear this lifestyle is becoming more popular among all breeds of cat and she, the local wildlife and my extremities are all thriving on it.

Humane hunting and playing

First, inspect your surroundings thoroughly and exhaustively. This should take about ten minutes. Don't worry if any people or animals notice your presence - humans will admire your beauty and any animals bigger than a large house fly can remove themselves to a safe distance.

Next, select your target. If it's a toy, it will be attached to a human who will try to attract your attention to it. If it's an animal or invertebrate, you will spot it on your patrol. Pick the smallest, slowest one possible to make it even more impressive when you don't catch it. Stare for a while to make sure it's alive, and if it's just a leaf, pounce then restart from the beginning.

Find something to hide behind. Bonus points if you are almost completely visible while hiding. More intense staring, preferably in a crouched and immobile position. Then become distracted by a cloud, a tree, or the mysteries of the Universe.

Find a second inadequate hiding place and move nonchalantly to that. Double bonus points if you now do not have a straight run or jump towards your prey - ducking and zigzagging when you should be maximising the element of surprise ups the difficulty level. Yet more staring.

The moment of truth! Pounce. Then pounce again, and possibly three times if you manage to miss twice, making it a hat-trick! Then watch your prey run, fly or be dragged or thrown away from you before you pick a completely random direction for a lap of honour. Pretend nothing happened. An optional extra if it's a favourite toy is to return to snuggle up and snooze with your fabric friend later!

Our old cat used to catch a whole rabbit a day (he was 11kg - I used to think he was 7kg but no, he was 11kg) and consume it, leaving only the caecum, a high-starch organ that they don't like eating being obligate carnivores. He never brought anything dead in, but would perform the whole meal in front of our main door. He also brought in a small, frightened mole. It was an enormous house. We were not pleased.

Well done Velvet, very brave! My wee Bubbles used to do the tragic noises all the way to the vet, at the vet, and all the way home again, followed by at least two days of giving me the cold shoulder. Evidently Velvet is made of sterner stuff.

I don't suppose there's any chance your mother would do the (ahaha, no) decent thing, and let you swap Velvet for the semi-domesticated tiger she would clearly prefer?

Cecile, that is a wonderful picture of Velvet!

And many thanks for your contributions to the book. I'll show them to Linney when he bothers to come back from his foray into the front garden, pretending he's looking for mice.

So far, he's only found Picard and Suzy.

Plus ca change.........

She wants one that worships her (I won't even explain the context behind this but the other day she said she wanted to stuff Mr N, the said domesticated half-tiger, because he was "a devoted and loving companion to ME") so I think it's the fact that Velvet prefers me that's winding her up. I'm sure if I move out Velvet and she will come to an agreement and gradually Velvet will just forget about me and live a long, happy and fat life on my mother's bed. On the other hand, my mother does often say things like "oh well, if she dies on the road, we'll just get another one" and was actually looking at kittens on Battersea's website the other day. I'd also need to find a quiet place to live with a nice bit of garden which allows pets, so it's hard to see how it could be feasible, but maybe one day?